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Saturday December 29, 2012 4:50 AM

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning the adoption of Russian orphans
by U.S. families, the Kremlin announced yesterday.

The measure was widely seen as retaliation for the Sergei Magnitsky Act passed by Congress and
signed by President Barack Obama this month, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials involved
in the death of a imprisoned lawyer in 2009 after he blew the whistle on a multimillion-dollar tax
refund scam allegedly orchestrated by tax inspectors and police officers.

Over the past two decades, American families have adopted more than 60,000 Russian children.
About 1,500 cases of adoption by U.S. families currently are in Russian courts, 52 of them in the
final approval stage.